Total power usage in kWh for running our pc's or servers?

nucastle · 24 Nov 2011 at 12:16

Does anyone know what kind of total power useage might be for a given set of computer types. Obviously home users (hopefully) turn their machines off when they don't need them and have a variable draw on the psu if they are running games or not.

I was wondering what the total energy usage might be for these kinds of computers for a given spec, and also for business/enterprise class servers which obviously draw some serious juice!

I'm thinking of writing a green article on virtualised/cloud based computing (since im very interested in the whole emissions/green world) versus having physical machines, so wondered if anyone had any stats out there?

Nikumba · 24 Nov 2011 at 13:27

I would start with the manufactures HP, Dell etc as they should have power consumption on their websites for their servers.

What given spec? what usage? As a domain controller would use less juice than a SQL server

Kimbie

Semple · 24 Nov 2011 at 13:41

I've read plenty of our documentation which includes details of power draw.

Have a look at www.hp.com/support and enter a specific product for details.

Just to give you some idea, one of my DL380s is running at 202 Watts, another is at 149 watts. These are 2U servers.

A 4U server of mine, the DL370 is using 463 watts.

Liquidfox · 24 Nov 2011 at 13:52

The typical HP ProLiant ML350 that we supply comes with a choice of 460W/750W/1200W power supplies. As people have said though, draw depends on it's role in a network.

Not too sure how I find out what kind of draw they're currently taking though.

nucastle · 24 Nov 2011 at 14:11

Yeah it's going to be hard to get an average - since it varies by manufacturer and the role of a box.

It would be interesting to get some real world stats for a given environment and server role as a means for comparing physical metal against a theoretical cloud based situation.

Obviously the draw is going to be different on a virtual box since it consolidates a mixture of what might be low and high utilized servers.

It would be good if the manufacturers states draw for typical usage scenarios as well eh